


A Tale of Two Lessons

by Hedge_witch



Series: The Many Woes of Westeros School. [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Gen, In-Jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 05:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hedge_witch/pseuds/Hedge_witch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Continuing my Westeros High School series, a brief study of the 'interesting' teaching methods of its staff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tale of Two Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> 1) The extract from Richard II that Arya chooses is one of my favourites and it is utterly appropriate for Westeros. (This is hardly surprising as GRRM did use the Wars of the Roses as a significant source of inspiration.) 
> 
> 2) The Pilgrimage of Grace was a rebellion, primarily based in Lincolnshire and the north of England that took place during 1536. It was primarily motivated by a dislike of Henry VIII's religious and economic policies. I can easily see Robb Stark taking part. (And being executed when the rebellion was brutally put down.) 
> 
> 3) Neither of these lessons follows the established National Curriculum or any courses that I ever took at that level. But then again I never had teachers like this either. (Thank God.)

English Department, Room E1. GCSE English Class with Stannis Baratheon:

“Now that you are all suitably attired and sitting quietly I will distribute last weeks homework. Arya, your handwriting is so atrocious that I stopped trying to make this out halfway through. You therefore fail the task by default. On a related subject, Joffrey, your handwriting appears to be identical to Sansa’s, I assume you have an explanation?”

“I helped him write it out sir, because he had hurt his hand, but it was all his own work I promise!”

“I see, did he get a nasty paper cut? Joffrey, should your hand injury magically recur next week I will expect a note from the school nurse, otherwise I will make you stay behind after class and do an extra writing task so that I may be assured that you are capable of writing things in your own words.”

“You can’t do that!”

“I THINK YOU WILL FIND THAT I CAN! Do you have any further objections or shall we continue?..I”

“Now, Gendry, your homework was actually of an acceptable standard this week so I am going to put a commendation in your planner. However, this does not excuse you for wearing unacceptable attire in the corridors so I will take that hoodie from you...Thank you.” 

“Sir what are you doing with those scissors?”

“Why I am merely removing the hood from what would otherwise be a perfectly inoffensive sweatshirt, thereby removing temptation from your path....I’m sorry I didn’t quite catch that muttered comment, though it sounded awfully like you used the phrase ‘completely insane’ at one point. “

“No, I said that it makes complete sense sir.”

“While I am glad we are in agreement I think that the phrase ‘perfect sense’ would have been a better choice of words. On a more serious note, I have here Mycah’s latest offering, in which I counted two double-negatives, five incorrect uses of an apostrophe and one occurrence of the word ‘sick’ used, I believe, as a term of approbation. Sansa, if you would fetch the large bowl and the box of matches from the windowsill...thank you. Where does this collection of crimes against the English language go class?

“Into the flames sir.”

“Quite so, now, while that is merrily burning away I would like you to take out your copies of Richard II please. Now I asked you at the end of last lesson to read over the play and to select a section of a soliloquy that you found particularly interesting. Arya, would you read aloud from the extract you have chosen?” 

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings. How some have been deposed; some slain in war; Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poison’d by their wives, some sleeping kill’d;  
All murder’d; for within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king. Keeps Death his court; and there the antick sits, scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp. Allowing him a breath; a little scene. To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks, infusing him with self and vain conceit. As if this flesh, which walls about our life, were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus. Comes at the last, and with a little pin. Bores through his castle wall, and, farewell king!” 

“I see, an interesting choice Arya, so what do you think that passage means?”

“Valar Morghulis, sir.”

“No-one else knows what that means Arya, please refrain from speaking in made-up languages in this class, it doesn’t make you sound clever.”

“It means that all men must die! Richard’s finally getting a clue that he’s not so bloody special after all and that the God of Death is gonna come for him like everyone else.” 

“I see, and how does Richard suggest that the ‘God of Death’ might come for a king?”

“Well he talks about ‘boring through the castle wall with a pin’ that could mean an assassin or something, maybe one who uses a blowpipe and some poison darts!” 

“And once again we veer off into the wilder reaches of fancy. Sansa, I realise it is not your forté but could you attempt to bring the class back down to earth? Perhaps you could say something about the techniques Shakespeare uses.”

“Well he talks about a king being ‘sleeping kill’d’ that’s a bit like Duncan in Macbeth...”

“Yes, but it can’t be a reference to it because Richard II was written before Macbeth wasn’t it?”

“Oh, was it? 

“Yes, I suppose its a little ambitious of me to think that you might have learned the chronology of Shakespeare’s plays. After all it seems that none of you have even read this play to the end. Did nobody note the foreshadowing?..Ah I see, the habitual wall of blank faces...In the passage Richard refers to some kings being ‘haunted by the ghosts they have deposed’, now when you do finally manage to read to the end of the play, you will see that this is relevant to the experience of Bolingbroke after he illegally seizes the throne from Richard.”

“Sir! Sir!”

“Ah Joffrey...I was so looking forward to your contribution. I assume you have some kind of objection?”

“This play is rubbish sir.”

“A powerful and discerning critique, would you care to share your objection to one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces with the rest of the class?”

“Everyone’s so wet sir! Richard’s really rubbish. He should have made Bolingbroke and Norfolk fight to the death at the beginning instead of making them hug like little girls. And Bolingbroke’s stupid as well. If he’s going to rebel then he should stop whining about it!” 

“I’m sure all their problems could have been avoided if they had merely adopted your view of kingship. I’m certain that were you in their position, you would never have people queuing up to poison you...however, do you not think that Bolingbroke might have been a little uneasy, seeing that Richard was his cousin?”

“My mum says that when you play the game of thrones, you win or you die sir.”

“Yes that does rather sound like my sister in law, I still have scars from the last time we played a game of Risk. Anyway, unsurprisingly you are all missing the point. Though he was incapable of providing good justice, the throne was Richard’s by right and therefore any rebellion against him was treasonous and should have been punished accordingly. Of course, an exception might have been made for divine intervention, but no human hand could have executed it...If, for example, Bolingbroke had been able to generate a shadow assassin to dispose of Richard one might be able to see the hand of god in events, the night is dark and full of terrors after all...You all appear to have gone uncharacteristically quiet class, may I ask why?”

“....A, shadow baby sir?”

“Yes Arya, I suppose you could put it like that...Anyway, now I would like you to open your textbooks to page 346 and do exercises a, b and c in COMPLETE silence thank you, or I will be forced to gag you...I’m not sure why you find that so amusing Sansa, I assure you that I’m perfectly serious...”

 

***

History Department, Room HE1, A Level History Class with Tyrion Lannister:

“Right everyone, it is approximately five minutes past and as usual, my eyesight will magically return in thirty seconds. I suggest you use that time to hide mobile phones, dirty magazines, badly written erotic literature and other illicit substances unless you want me to confiscate them for my own use...Right lets see, well we appear to have a seventy-five percent attendance rate which I am going to count as a win...I am of course only taking physical presence into account, speaking of which, Robb, could you please give Theon a little nudge, I’d like to know if he is mentally in attendance or if his spirit has flown elsewhere...”

“Err, I think he might have whined slightly when I elbowed him in the ribs sir...”

“Oh so he can potentially contribute then, that’s fine. Right! Last week’s essays everyone. Jon and Robb, I’m going to lump you two in together because it appears that you absorb each others mistakes via osmosis. I will repeat for the tenth time, we are not interested in finding out who was wrong or right in a particular historical scenario, we want to analyse the evidence to answer a particular question. I find your moral dilemmas profoundly boring. Also Robb, you continue to have issues with structure. You make each individual point very well, but you can’t seem to link them together to form a coherent whole, I suggest you sort that out...Theon, I don’t care to speculate what you were on when you wrote this, but I’m afraid to say that it’s a complete disaster. I’ll admit that it has a certain ambition but you seem to have abandoned your original argument entirely in your third paragraph and it just dissolves into a complete clusterfuck from there...Robb, do you think he got that?”

“I’m not sure sir, he made a sort of, grunting noise of rage when you called his essay a clusterfuck though.”

“Excellent! That indicates a certain level of sentience! Feel free to insult him throughout the lesson, we may finally be able to goad him into wakefulness. Now Margaery, a polished piece of work as always, though I note you tend to opt for the court-culture questions. Be aware that you will have to answer two essay questions in this paper so you might want to widen your range. And as for you, Loras, I’m not sure that a fifty-fifty ratio of text to ‘illustrations’ is really appropriate for an A Level essay. It is also painfully evident that you lifted almost the entirety of your second section from Wikipedia. If you are going to do that, at least put some effort into disguising it.” 

“Sir I think I’ve forgotten my textbook!”

“Ah, well luckily for you I do have a spare, unfortunately it is rather perilously held together with duct-tape after my charming nephew decided to vent his frustrations upon it... So, where are we this week? I think I left my lesson plan in a bar again, which is slightly annoying, as I believe I was using it to write down someone’s telephone number, but never mind, there are many more where that came from.” 

“We got up to The Pilgrimage of Grace sir.” 

‘Ah yes, so we did, well, lets open the floor to some general discussion then. Robb, I thought you might be the first to contribute...”

“Well I think the rebels had a point sir.”

“You shock me.”

“Well they had a load of southerners who had previously had very little to do with them imposing some new religion on them, dissolving their monasteries and taking the money back down to London...I would’ve been angry too!”

“Ah I see you take the traditional view that the dissolution of the monasteries was primarily a money-grabbing exercise. Is anyone here going to provide a different perspective on Thomas Cromwell or is it going to be up to me to leap to the defence of the poor Vicegerent in Spirituals. Margaery, you object?”

“He arranged the execution of Anne Boleyn, on completely trumped up charges.”

“Ah, but on whose orders?”

“Well the king’s I suppose.” 

“Precisely, as I have consistently emphasised, it is a characteristic method of opposition in this period to divert criticism to the king’s ‘evil advisors’ and therefore to avoid charges of treason. Such sources are therefore not to be taken at face value. Consider the atmosphere at court, when a king demands revenue, it behoves his servants to see that he gets it, otherwise they will quickly be replaced, frequently in a bloody and rather unpleasant fashion. After the execution of the queen in 1536 this would no doubt have been at the forefront of everyone’s minds regardless of the role they played in her conviction.”

“...Now we appear, once again, to be veering off into a debate about the rights and wrongs of the situation, which always makes me faintly uncomfortable, both as a historian and as a self-confessed amoral bastard. Shall we therfore turn our attention to discussing the varying importance of the religious and economic grievances of the rebels? Jon, you appear to be rather quiet, I was expecting you to be providing the backing vocals for Robb’s moralistic little boyband...Oh! is that the buzzing of an incoming text I hear?”

“I’m sorry sir, but...”

“No buts Jon, you know the rules, all contributions, even electronic ones, are to be aired for the benefit of the class. Hand it over.”

“Yes sir.”

“Ah, a text from the perpetually absent Ygritte! Does she indicate whether she will be turning up to a lesson at any point in this term? Lets see what she says. ‘You know nothing Jon Snow.”...Well, thats rather discouraging, but not entirely inaccurate...You can stop sniggering over there Loras, at least he isn’t sending people pictures of his penis during lessons!”

“Sir that was one time!”

“So it was once too often! Be grateful I only subjected you to a little light ridicule, if you’d been in Mr Baratheon’s lesson he’d have probably chopped it off! Anyway, you’re all being rather annoying so I’d like you to spend the next half-hour chatting amongst yourselves whilst pretending to do the exercises on page 197 of your textbook. I shall be over in the corner nursing my hangover, please only disturb me if Theon starts vomiting everywhere or one of you manages to set something on fire.”


End file.
